An Afghan policeman shot dead three British soldiers at a checkpoint in southern Helmand province on Sunday, Afghan officials said, the latest in a chain of increasingly frequent rogue killings.
A fourth British soldier was injured, provincial governor spokesman Daoud Ahmadi said of the attack, which could further erode trust between Nato and the Afghan forces they train before most foreign combat troops leave in 2014.
The soldiers were serving with an Afghan police advisory team and were killed after a meeting at the checkpoint at Nahr-e-Saraj in Helmand, Britain’s defence ministry said yesterday. The assailant was injured and detained.
Defence secretary Philip Hammond said the deaths, which take to 422 the number of British military personnel killed in Afghanistan since the Nato-led war began in 2001, would not affect Britain’s mission there. – (Reuters)